news
blooming good competition
onedotzero and MTV Networks International (MTVNI) Creative have launched Bloom, a global competition to find the best up-and-coming moving image talent from around the world and to commission a series of one-minute-films that explore identity, local environment and community. The entries will be judged by a panel of experts from MTVNI Creative and onedotzero. The winning creative treatments will be commissioned and be given the chance to get in front of a global audience via MTV channels and the onedotzero festival tour. Entries must be received by january 31 2007 (early entry is advised). Full creative brief and terms + conditions can be found at the bloom website http://www.mtvonedotzero.com
sir tim berners-lee
Born in London in 1955 ; read physics at Queen's College,
Oxford. Banned from using university PC for hacking. Built own computer with
old TV, a Motorola microprocessor and soldering iron. Created web in late 1980s
and early 1990s at Cern; offered it free on the net; founded World Wide Web Consortium
at MIT in 1994. Named by Time magazine as one of the top 20 thinkers of the 20th
century. Knighted in 2003. What a guy - interview here.
prix
ars electronica awards announced: new media now 'taken for granted' in artistic
expression
Ever
since its inception, the Prix Ars Electronica has focussed on state of the art
creativity in the key fields of digital media: Computer Animation / Visual Effects,
Digital Music, Interactive Art and Net Vision. With the inauguration of the Digital
Communities category in 2004, Prix Ars Electronica has devoted increasing attention
to the impact art and technology are having on social developments.
Creative
artists from 71 countries submitted 2,975 works for prize consideration this year.
Prominent international experts convened April 21-24 in Linz, Austria to select
award winners. The seven juries selected the winners of six Golden Nicas, 12 Awards
of Distinction and 73 Honorary awards. Once again, the winning projects confirm
the competition's role as a barometer of international trends in the world of
media art.
Asked
to sum up the general trends that have emerged from the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica
competition, Ars Electronica Artistic Director Gerfried Stocker concluded that
technology as an object of artistic consideration has now clearly been relegated
to a position of secondary importance as compared to Prix Ars Electronica competitions
in previous years, when the technology itself consistently occupied the focal
point of attention. "New media are now taken completely for granted as artistic
instruments that can be used to express a broad spectrum of ideas, concepts and
narratives," Gerfried Stocker said.
"Accordingly,
investigations analyzing the discourses inherent in social and political circumstances
have assumed an increasingly prominent position in contemporary media art, as
have art-immanent manifestations and elaborations, as well as reflections of the
formal syntax of the early days of media art," Christine Schoepf (documentary
producer for the Austrian Broadcasting Company) added.
"More
and more museums and festivals are making space available to display media art,
which is providing artists not only with a material basis for their professional
existence but also with a more professional way to go about doing their art. This
state of affairs has manifested itself at the Prix Ars Electronica as a continually
rising standard of quality being exhibited by the works submitted," Gerfried
Stocker went on to note. Full text of article at Ars
Electronica site.
a concise model of the universe
Suppose
the universe was a conglomerate of overlapping incidents, thoughts and experiences.
Here poetry, there history, at other places quirky, sometimes biological, occasionally
pychological: if you get this text picture, then visiting Paul Annear's Concise
Model of the Universe will be just your ticket. Highly intriguing.
ars
electronica turns corner after 25 years
"If
the symposium felt a little stuck, this year’s many exhibitions made it clear
that digital art has turned a corner. The best works consciously distanced themselves
from the whizz-bang obsession with technology itself, moving towards a more contemplative
vision, where technology served as an invisible vehicle for pure aesthetic experience."
Read more of this years leading
new media event at Contemporary magazine.
http://www.contemporary-magazine.com/reviews68_2.htm
Ars
Electronica www.aec.at
five
technologies to watch in 2005
The
Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) of the USA publishes an annual report on
five technology trends to keep an eye on in the coming year.
Media
Servers
Media
servers contain a hard disk drive for storing digital media and allow distribution
of those files to other devices located throughout the home. According to the
CEA, more than 52 percent of U.S households are expected to have home networks
by 2008, so the infrastructure for media servers is firmly in place. However product
interconnectivity, bandwidth capacity and copyright issues remain the largest
barriers to mass adoption. As these issues are resolved in the near future, the
market for media servers is expected to grow rapidly, allowing consumers to store
digital media, including photos, movies and music, on one device and listen to
or view it on another.
Portable
Entertainment
While
portable entertainment is not a new fad, advances in digital technology are changing
not only the types of portable entertainment devices but also the way consumers
use them. With the explosion of digital music and the popularity of digital music
download services, shipments of portable MP3 players have topped 2.5 million units
in the first half of 2004, according to CEA market research. The report also indicated
that portable entertainment devices are on a convergence path with cell phones,
personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital memo recorders and even cars hitting
the market with MP3 capabilities. In the digital video realm, portable DVD players
and installed mobile video are the hot ticket items as consumers increasingly
want the ability to take their digital video content with them wherever they go.
Hybrid
White Goods
Hybrid
white goods, otherwise known as the smart kitchen, are products that combine old
technologies with new. Examples include refrigerators that can monitor the shelf
life of its contents and ovens that can download and execute recipes via the Internet.
According to the CEA, broadband is the key to this technology, so the continued
expansion of high-speed home networks is promising for the rollout of the smart
kitchen. Consumers are intrigued by the convenience and efficiency of hybrid white
goods, as a recent survey by the Internet Home Alliance revealed that 42 percent
of U.S. single-family homeowners are interested in new technology in a connected
home.
Gaming
Innovative
gaming is the fourth out of the Five Technologies to Watch. The publication explains
that while traditional console video games are the most popular, with 35 percent
of American homes owning a system, computer or PC games, online games and portable
games also are an integral part of the growing gaming trend. Highly cyclical in
nature, the console industry continues to see declining numbers in terms of sales;
however those numbers are expected to bounce back when the major players in the
category announce their next generation consoles. In contrast, online, portable
and wireless gaming are expected to take off in the next couple of years as older
gamers and women become an increasingly larger part of the gaming population.
In-Car
Electronics
Telematics,
which is technology that enables the electronics embedded in a vehicle to connect
wirelessly to external sources, has reshaped the role of consumer electronics
in the car. In the near future, telematics will enable an off-board navigation
system where satellite information is beamed directly to the vehicle instead of
scripted from a CD or DVD. It also will allow music to download directly to a
car stereo through a wireless broadband connection. While traditionally used for
emergency monitoring services or hands-free wireless phones, Five Technologies
to Watch indicates that the successful adoption of telematics lies in the entertainment
realm, which might include TV, movies and games piped into the car wirelessly.
This trend will provide a boost to aftermarket video and navigation sales and
allow the car to be connected to the outside world in the same manner that homes
and offices are today.
For
the second year running the Five Technologies to Watch report featured a special
section dedicated to new and emerging consumer electronics technologies, including
biometric scanning, humanoid robots, match-making cell phones, wearable computers
and three dimensional televisions. These and other futuristic technologies are
already in development by a handful of innovative companies and will alter the
world of consumer technology.
For
more information, go to http://www.ce.org/press_room/press_release_detail.asp?id=10604
Source:
the Kayye report.
tenderly
absurd: matthew rose shows again
Letter from Paris writer Matthew Rose
writes and stars in his own handmade "books," carving stories out of
found materials, paint, paper, glue and ideas -- turning the irrational into a
personal hero myth that is tenderly absurd. Books, words and stories will all
be on view at Art Vitam ( www.artvitam.com)
in the Wynwood Art District in Miami. Claire Jeanine Satin, Michael Baigneaux,
Mary Bennett will also exhibit a range of book works. Further info and a new image
are here.
thick
emptiness and holes
Download an A4 full colour pdf
of the poster for Caterina Verde’s show at Galerie Pennings in Eindhoven
free - no strings attached. Read a review of her work by staff writer Matthew
Rose here.
hans
hoffman
Hoffman (1880-1966): artist, teacher, key figure in American art
and probably less known than he deserves. The painter fled Germany in the 1930's,
set up an art school in the USA and taught Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry
Rivers and Red Grooms. The Naples Museum of Art Florida has organised a retrospective
of 70 paintings covering 50 years and running through to March 21 2004. Click
this link for a critique of the show.
http://www.thephil.org/phildb/DisplayMuseum.tpl?SKU=20030627170237
The
Naples deserves consideration for a visit - between now and next year along with
Hoffman, you'll find Dale Chihuly, Modern Mexican masters, Karsh portraits, Clement
Greenberg's collection of you know what, Agnes Denes projects and contemporary
Native American Art from the Southwest.
down
the rabbit hole
Commentary: Good! Good! GOOOOD! Just go there! Aha ha
ha! Abstract, beautiful, funny, interactive.
Known
simply as 'samorost.swf', this interactive Flash game by Czechoslovakia's Amanita
Design combines Myst/Riven-like puzzles with a whimsical animation style reminiscent
of crankbunny.com (or Roger Dean's early 'Yes' album covers). The puzzles are
challenging but surrealistically intuitive, and the combination of gorgeously
textured organic settings and playfully animated vector characters is plenty of
motivation to advance to the next level. Samorost is a rare combination of entertainment,
art, absurdism, and humor. And, as an added bonus, you get to save a planet from
utter destruction. Source: rhizome.org
http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf
Unfortunately
you must join up to explore and it's resolutely American but a very rhizomatic
approach to finding people….:
fakester
avatars
The Friendster craze is officially 'so five minutes ago.' The
sentiment was confirmed when my college roommate, now a producer's assistant at
ABC World News, propositioned me for an interview about the website. When the
reporter asked me about fake profiles of ABC's anchor Peter Jennings, I replied,
'Everyone knows that Peter Jennings is a Fakester.' Friendster's network of profiles,
pictures, and testimonials are attached through visible webs of mutual friendships.
The site spins conventional online dating into an addictive form of social research
that makes unexpected reunions possible for singles and couples alike. In Friendster's
second wave of popularity, pranksters have created 'Fakesters,' charlatan profiles
that serve up fandom, tributes, institutional affiliations, or conceptual identifications.
Pop stars like Beyonce Knowles, not to mention celebrity dogs, have cultivated
large circles of friends. For intelligensia-hounds, Guy Debord was recently spotted
on Friendster using a 1000 word Situationalist manifesto in his 'About Me' column.
Some of the most clever conceptual fakesters include the number Pi, who likes
Dating both Men and Women, Gay Cliché, whose interests include 'being dumb
and listening to bad dance music,' and Canada. Friendster site administrators
aren't keen on these comic avatars, so catch these conceptual fakesters while
you can. Source: rhizome.org
http://www.friendster.com
One page
of satire to help you deal with the non-news we are saturated in - if you explore
further to the parent site http://www.unbehagen.com
there are some playfulconcepts - notably the alice in wonderland mirror site which
literally mirrors your favourite site - in answer to a browsers anomie:
a
pain in my ssid
Once any new technology is unveiled, someone will find
a way to make it painful. Taking this a bit too literally is Christophe Bruno,
whos latest project, 'WiFi-SM,' features a plan for a WiFi-enabled, wearable patch
that dishes a powerful jolt of electricity. How does it work? After connecting
to a public node, the chip scans up to 4,000 news sources looking for keywords
such as 'murder,' 'death,' and 'kill.' If they're found, the chip triggers a shock
so wearers can 'feel' global pain. If participants want to personalize the experience,
the product's built-in P2P (Pain-to-Pain) technology allows them to adjust pain
thresholds and define their own keywords. Since it's a patch, one can also decide
where it goes on the body. My personal keywords would probably be "George
Bush", and I think you know where it would be placed. Source: rhizome.org
http://www.unbehagen.com/wifism/
In this cynical,
satirical, postmodern soup, no-one has any faith that it will get any better than
this. Here then is evidence - social commentary that shows we have come through
several revolutions - hence there is more to come - and the reactionary cannot
prevail! Hungry on the bandwidth:
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